Upcoming Concerts & Events
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La Boutade: French Chamber Music from Versailles to Paris

Sunday 28 July at 4pm - Girton College Chapel, Cambridge
The Parley of Instruments
Lully’s La Boutade (caprice or mischief) begins this fascinating musical journey from the royal bedchamber at Versailles, where Louis XIV was entertained by chamber music played by court wind and string players, to the bustling streets and the popular theatres of eighteenth-century Paris, where Michel Corrette’s concertos comiques on popular tunes were played and Joseph Bodin de Boismortier wrote his remarkable balets de village evoking rustic music-making. Along the way we encounter music by Marin Marais, Anne-Danican Philidor, Antoine Dornel and Jacques-Christophe Naudot (who contributes another remarkable caprice) for varied combinations of recorders, oboe, violins, bass viol, violoncello and harpsichord.


​Marc-Antoine Charpentier & François Couperin

Wednesday 31 July - Emmanuel United Reform Church, Cambridge
At 7pm Pre-concert talk by Professor Graham Sadler 
At 8pm Concert by The Parley of Instruments and Claire Coleman soprano, Daniel Auchincloss haute contre, Stuart O’Hara bass
​A double musical portrait of the two greatest French composers of the reign of Louis XIV. We survey some of the extraordinary music Marc-Antoine Charpentier wrote for the virtuoso ensemble in the household of the Duchesse de Guise, including extracts from the chamber opera Actéon, the serenata ‘Sù, sù, sù, non dormite’ and the passionate solo motet ‘Magdalena lugens’. Charpentier’s music is a creative synthesis of French and Italian elements, and his young admirer François Couperin took the process a stage further in the beautiful but little-known motets and sonatas he wrote in the 1690s, soon after he began working at Versailles. We contrast festive motets for St Anne and St Susanna with the dramatic ‘Audite omnes’, a meditation on the passion for solo haute contre.


​Baroque Summer School showcase 

Saturday 3 August at 7.30pm - Girton College Great Hall, Cambridge
Our Baroque Summer School students perform the chamber and large-scale pieces they have worked on during the week.


​Jouyssance vous donneray

Sunday 4 August at 4pm - Girton College Chapel, Cambridge
The Courtiers of Grace
​The sixteenth century was a turbulent one all over Europe, with political and religious mistrust and upheaval touching every country, France more than most. French music, however, found enthusiastic admirers and willing imitators across many countries. This concert shows some of the ways in which innovative, tuneful and poetic French songs found new life and expression at home, across the channel and south of the Alps.


​City voices, Courtly airs

Wednesday 7 August - Emmanuel United Reform Church, Cambridge
At 7pm pre-concert talk by Professor Richard Freedman
At 8pm concert by The Courtiers of Grace
​A journey through sixteenth-century France, from chanson to air de cour, via the city tavern and the turbulence of the Reformation church, with adventures along the way in words taking charge of music. Works by Josquin, Le Jeune, Sermisy, Sandrin, Janequin, Certon, Lassus and others.


​Renaissance Summer School Showcase

Saturday 10 August at 7.30pm - Girton College Great Hall, Cambridge
Our Renaissance Summer School students perform the chamber and large-scale pieces they have worked on during the week.

Bespoke for Broadwood: music for the divided sustaining pedal

Thursday 17 October at 7.30pm - West Road Concert Hall
David Owen Norris, 1828 Broadway Grand Pianoforte
An intimate evening with David Owen Norris playing on his 1828 Broadwood Grand Pianoforte Mendelssohn’s Sonata in E Op. 6 and Rondo Caprichoso along with Sterndale’s Sonata Op. 46.

For the first thirty years or so of the nineteenth century, Broadwoods sawed their wooden sustaining pedals in two, the right-hand half raising the dampers from middle C up, and the left-hand half raising the dampers from middle B down. Mendelssohn and Sterndale Bennett were just two of many composers who took advantage of this potent device.

David Owen Norris’s Broadwood pianoforte displays all these devices to perfection.

Eccles' Semele

Tuesday 26 November at 8pm - Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge
AAM Orchestra and CHOC singers
Cambridge Handel Opera Company, Cambridge Early Music and Academy of Ancient Music join forces for the first time for a rare concert performance of John Eccles' Semele.
​Semele is a lively retelling of the story of Jupiter’s pursuit of the Theban princess. Juno plots her downfall by persuading her to insist on seeing him in his divine form, whereupon his thunderbolts consume her. Planned for the opening of London’s Italian Opera House, Semele was never performed at the time, and the libretto is best known today from Handel’s later Oratorio.

It is a highly dramatic and effective response to the text in an attractive idiom mixing English and Italian elements and deserves to be better known.

Dates for your diaries

The Sense of Hearing
Wednesday 13 November at 7pm - Recital Hall, Anglia Ruskin University
The Brook Street Band & Roots Ensemble
This concert is part of the Education Project ​Roots.
Gabriel's Message
Thursday 12 December at 7.30pm - Emmanuel URC
Mediva Ensemble
N.B. For concerts taking place on a Sunday, bookings via Cambridge Live will close at 4pm the day before (Saturday). Tickets will still be available on the door.
The Friends of Cambridge Early Music have joined up with the Hughes Hall Music Society to found Insight, a series of early music events with a difference, taking place in the Pavilion Room, Hughes Hall, Mortimer Road, Cambridge CB1 2EW.

The series resumes in the autumn of 2018 after the renovation of the Pavilion Room.

Tickets are free but booking is essential; please contact friends@cambridgeearlymusic.org or telephone 01223 411762.
  
Jennie Hawks
Chairman, Friends of Cambridge Early Music